In the eleventh of his Antiquarian Letters, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing discusses a phrase from Lucian's description of the painting by Zeuxis called A Family of Centaurs: ‘at the top of the painting a centaur is leaning down as if from an observation point, smiling’. ‘This as if from an observation point, Lessing notes, obviously implies that Lucian himself was uncertain whether this figure was positioned further back, or was at the same time on higher ground. We need to recognize the (...) logic of ancient bas-reliefs where figures further to the back look over those at the front, not because they are actually positioned above them but because they are meant to appear as if standing behind.'1 · 1. The passage is in George Lessing, Briefe, antiquarischen Inhalts, p. 81. Panofsky's discussion does not note that the original text of Lucian makes clear that what is described is a copy of the original painting. This means that some of the issues of misunderstanding situated by Lessing and Panofsky in Lucian's court may in principle be attributable to the copyist. This makes no difference to the conceptual thrust of Panofsky's case.—Trans. (shrink)

Human reproductive cloning has not yet resulted in any live births. There has been widespread condemnation of the practice in both the scientific world and the public sphere, and many countries explicitly outlaw the practice. Concerns about the procedure range from uncertainties about its physical safety to questions about the psychological well-being of clones. Yet, key aspects such as the philosophical implications of harm to future entities and a comparison with established reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilisation are often (...) overlooked in discussions about HRC. Furthermore, there are people who are willing to use the technology. Several scientists have been outspoken in their intent to pursue HRC. The importance of concerns about the physical safety of children created by HRC and comparisons with concerns about the safety of IVF are discussed. A model to be used to determine when it is acceptable to use HRC and other new assisted reproductive technologies, balancing reproductive freedom and safety concerns, is proposed. Justifications underpinning potential applications of HRC are discussed, and it is determined that these are highly analogous to rationalisations used to justify IVF treatment. It is concluded that people wishing to conceive using HRC should have a prima facie negative right to do so. (shrink)

Recently, priming effects of unconscious stimuli that were never presented as targets have been taken as evidence for the processing of the stimuli’s semantic categories. The present study explored the necessary conditions for a transfer of priming to novel primes. Stimuli were digits and letters which were presented in various viewer-related orientations . The transfer of priming to novel stimulus orientations and identities was remarkably limited: in Experiment 1, in which all conscious targets stood upright, no transfer to unconscious primes (...) in a non-target orientation was found. Experiment 2, in which primes were presented without masks, ruled out the possibility that primes were presented too short to allow congruency effects. In Experiments 3 and 4, in which all targets were presented upside down, priming transferred to upright stimuli with target identities but neither to horizontal stimuli nor to stimuli with novel identities. We suggest that whether a transfer of priming to unpracticed stimuli occurs or not depends on observers’ expectations of specific stimulus exemplars. (shrink)

Das ethische Prinzip des Respekts vor der Autonomie des Patienten/Probanden hat in der modernen Medizin mittlerweile weltweit Bedeutung erlangt. Die Betonung der Autonomie des Patienten und Probanden in allen in der letzten Zeit verabschiedeten internationalen Deklarationen gibt dieser Tendenz unmissverständlich Ausdruck. Doch wenngleich diese Entwicklung unstrittig positiv ist, wirft sie dennoch eine Reihe von Fragen auf, die mit der Kodifizierung, Interpretation, Reichweite und Anwendung dieses universalen Prinzips verbunden sind. Die Antworten auf diese Fragen entscheiden darüber, ob Autonomie als hilfreiches, emanzipatorisches (...) oder als überforderndes, gar hegemoniales Prinzip begriffen wird. Diese normativen Probleme werden anhand von Beispielen aus der globalen Medizinethik verdeutlicht. Was in modernen Gesellschaften als Autonomie bezeichnet und für die Praxis fruchtbar gemacht wird, ist als ein soziales Konstrukt zu verstehen, nicht im Sinne einer Schimäre, sondern im Sinne einer soziokulturellen Leistung, die auf komplexen, historisch gewachsenen und kulturell geprägten Interaktionen von Gesellschaften, Institutionen und Individuen beruht. (shrink)

Das ethische Prinzip des Respekts vor der Autonomie des Patienten/Probanden hat in der modernen Medizin mittlerweile weltweit Bedeutung erlangt. Die Betonung der Autonomie des Patienten und Probanden in allen in der letzten Zeit verabschiedeten internationalen Deklarationen gibt dieser Tendenz unmissverständlich Ausdruck. Doch wenngleich diese Entwicklung unstrittig positiv ist, wirft sie dennoch eine Reihe von Fragen auf, die mit der Kodifizierung, Interpretation, Reichweite und Anwendung dieses universalen Prinzips verbunden sind. Die Antworten auf diese Fragen entscheiden darüber, ob Autonomie als hilfreiches, emanzipatorisches (...) oder als überforderndes, gar hegemoniales Prinzip begriffen wird. Diese normativen Probleme werden anhand von Beispielen aus der globalen Medizinethik verdeutlicht. Was in modernen Gesellschaften als Autonomie bezeichnet und für die Praxis fruchtbar gemacht wird, ist als ein soziales Konstrukt zu verstehen, nicht im Sinne einer Schimäre, sondern im Sinne einer soziokulturellen Leistung, die auf komplexen, historisch gewachsenen und kulturell geprägten Interaktionen von Gesellschaften, Institutionen und Individuen beruht. (shrink)

The editorial introduces issue 21.1 of Technoetic Arts via a critical reflection on the artificial intelligence hype (AI hype) that emerged in 2022. Tracing the history of the critique of Large Language Models, the editorial underscores that there are substantial ethical challenges related to bias in the training data, copyright issues, as well as ecological challenges which the technology industry has consistently downplayed over the years. -/- The editorial highlights the distinction between the current AI technology’s reliance on extensive pre-existing (...) human-generated data for pattern recognition and the performative process inherent in art practice. Patterns of creative output can be replicated without a thorough understanding of underlying concepts. In contrast, the performative process of art practice, as explored through the conceptual frameworks of creativity by Noam Chomsky, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Roger T. Ames and with reference to an earlier publication of the editorial’s author, creates concepts and continually ‘strives to extend itself towards the unknown.’ -/- Following this introductory section, the editorial provides an overview of the ten articles featured in this issue of Technoetic Arts. The first four texts engage with emerging technologies from various perspectives in art and design. The subsequent six articles, part of a special section titled 'Perspectives from Chandigarh,' reflect a quest for meaningful existence within colonial, patriarchal, and biopolitical structures that frame everyday practices of exclusion and oppression. (shrink)

Scientists engaged in global health research are increasingly faced with barriers to access and use of human tissues from the developing world communities where much of their research is targeted. In part, the problem can be traced to distrust of researchers from affluent countries, given the history of 'scientific-imperialism' and 'biocolonialism' reflected in past well publicized cases of exploitation of research participants from low to middle income countries. To a considerable extent, the failure to adequately engage host communities, the opacity (...) of informed consent, and the lack of fair benefit-sharing have played a significant role in eroding trust. These ethical considerations are central to biomedical research in low to middle income countries and failure to attend to them can inadvertently contribute to exploitation and erode trust. A 'tissue trust' may be a plausible means for enabling access to human tissues for research in a manner that is responsive to the ethical challenges considered. Preventing exploitation and restoring trust while simultaneously promoting global health research calls for innovative approaches to human tissues research. A tissue trust can reduce the risk of exploitation and promote host capacity as a key benefit. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Truth-conditions are systematically determined when they are the output of an algorithmic procedure that takes as input a set of semantic and contextual features. Truth-conditional sceptics have cast doubts on the thesis that truth-conditions are systematic in this sense. Against this form of scepticism, Schoubye and Stokke : 759–793) and Dobler : 451–474.) have provided systematic analyses of utterance truth-conditions. My aim is to argue that these theories are not immune to the kind of objections raised by truth-conditional sceptics. (...) In particular, I argue that the use of Questions Under Discussion and ways of being is problematic. (shrink)

Slurs are derogatory terms targeting individuals and groups of individuals on the basis of race, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation. The aim of my paper is to propose an account of appropriated uses of slurs – i.e. uses by targeted groups of their own slurs for non-derogatory purposes, as in the appropriation of ‘nigger’ by the African-American community, or the appropriation of ‘queer’ by the homosexual community. In my proposal appropriated uses are conceived as echoic, in Relevance Theory terms: (...) in-groups echo derogatory uses in ways and contexts that make manifest the dissociation from the offensive contents. I will show that the echoic strategy has interesting advantages over alternative theories, and especially over Anderson and Lepore’s deflationary strategy. (shrink)

Conscious experiences in infants remain poorly understood. In this NeuroView, Passos-Ferreira discusses recent evidence for and against consciousness in newborn babies. She argues that the weight of evidence from neuroimaging and behavioral studies supports the thesis that newborn infants are conscious.

We live and thrive in a global society and economy where education and training is essential to a nation’s competitiveness and to the standard of living of its people. Opening the doors of higher or further education beyond the enrollments in elite or select universities has become a greater necessity. This has spawned a movement to develop or expand institutions that are more affordable, accessible, flexible, and tied to business and industry. Take a look at the systems that have been (...) developed in 20 countries worldwide that were designed to meet these needs. Historical development of each system, as well as the strategies for addressing national mandates for preparing a workforce for the global economy, are described throughout each chapter. (shrink)

Political Correctness ist nicht nur Reizthema und Schlagwort medialer Debatten, sondern auch in Alltagskommunikation oft Ausloser hitziger Debatten um sprachliche Diskriminierung. Doch wie positionieren sich eigentlich Sprachprofis zu diesem Thema, was rat das Worterbuch? Der Einfluss von Diskursen auf Worterbucher ist zwar in der Forschung unstrittig; eine umfassende Untersuchung zur Wirkung eines bestimmten zeitgenossischen Phanomens auf einen abgeschlossenen Wortschatzbereich existierte jedoch bislang nicht. Dieser Lucke widmet sich die Autorin, die den uber eine Korpusanalyse gewonnenen Wortschatz der Political Correctness aus den (...) ersten zehn Jahren (1990-2000) des Diskurses in den ersten sechs Auflagen (1983-2006) des Duden - Universalworterbuchs untersucht. Erstmals wird hier die Diskurslexik der Political Correctness der 1990er Jahre greifbar gemacht. Daruber hinaus werden vorhandene lexikographische Strategien beschrieben sowie deren Defizite im Umgang mit problematischer Lexik aufgedeckt. Die Arbeit zeigt, dass das Ringen um einen angemessenen Sprachgebrauch, die Vermeidung von Pejorisierung feste Bestandteile des Sprachhandelns darstellen, dem sich Worterbucher mit deskriptivem oder normativem Anspruch zu stellen haben. (shrink)

When Marcel Proust started to work on In Search of Lost Time in 1908, he wrote this question in his notebook: 'Should I make it a novel, a philosophical study, am I a novelist?' Throughout his famous multi-volume work Proust directly engages several philosophers, and few novels are as thoroughly statured with philosophical themes and concepts as In Search of Lost Time. The Proustian Mind is an outstanding reference source to the rich philosophical range of Proust's work and the first (...) major volume of its kind. Including 30 chapters by an international team of contributors, the volume is divided into seven clear parts: Proust's life and works; metaphysics and epistemology; mind and language; aesthetics; ethics; gender and sexuality; predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. Within these sections key Proustian themes are explored from a philosophical standpoint, including time, the self, memory, imagination, metaphor and meaning, beauty, love, egoism and solipsism and desire. The final section considers Proust in relation to important philosophers such as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bergson, Walter Benjamin, Adorno, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Deleuze. The Proustian Mind is essential reading for those studying aesthetics, philosophy of literature, phenomenology and ethics, and will also be of interest to those in literature studying modernism, French literature, and the relationship between literature and philosophy. (shrink)

Looking times and gaze behavior indicate that infants can predict the goal state of an observed simple action event (e.g., object‐directed grasping) already in the first year of life. The present paper mainly focuses on infants’ predictive gaze‐shifts toward the goal of an ongoing action. For this, infants need to generate a forward model of the to‐be‐obtained goal state and to disengage their gaze from the moving agent at a time when information about the action event is still incomplete. By (...) about 6 months of age, infants show goal‐predictive gaze‐shifts, but mainly for familiar actions that they can perform themselves (e.g., grasping) and for familiar agents (e.g., a human hand). Therefore, some theoretical models have highlighted close relations between infants’ ability for action‐goal prediction and their motor development and/or emerging action experience. Recent research indicates that infants can also predict action goals of familiar simple actions performed by non‐human agents (e.g., object‐directed grasping by a mechanical claw) when these agents display agency cues, such as self‐propelled movement, equifinality of goal approach, or production of a salient action effect. This paper provides a review on relevant findings and theoretical models, and proposes that the impacts of action experience and of agency cues can be explained from an action‐event perspective. In particular, infants’ goal‐predictive gaze‐shifts are seen as resulting from an interplay between bottom‐up processing of perceptual information and top‐down influences exerted by event schemata that store information about previously executed or observed actions. (shrink)

Situated between pure practical reason and mere technical-practical skillfulness, prudence risks falling into the margins for Kant. This book seeks to discover a systematic place for prudence in his works and to reconfigure it as the empirical form of practical judgment, showing that prudence is essential to Kant s notion of happiness as well as for the fulfillment of moral imperatives.".

Populated with the likes of Francis of Assisi, Teresa of Avila, and Padre Pio, this book is a fascinating inquiry into the status of saints in the modern world.

One way to silence the powerless, Langton has taught us, is to pre-emptively disable their ability to do things with words. In this paper I argue that speakers can be silenced in a different way. You can let them speak, and obscure the meaning of their words afterwards. My aim is to investigate this form of silencing, that I call retroactive distortion. In a retroactive distortion, the meaning of the words of a speaker is distorted by the effect of a (...) subsequent speech act by a different speaker. After introducing this notion, I explore some reasons why retroactive distortions can be difficult to challenge and argue that, besides constituting a communicative injustice, they can eliminate topics from public consideration and therefore erode public debate. (shrink)

Pragmatic modulation makes contextual information necessary for interpretation. This poses a problem for homophonic reports and inter-contextual communication in general: of co-situated interlocutors, we can expect some common ground, but non-co-situated interpreters lack access to the context of utterance. Here I argue that we can nonetheless share modulated contents via homophonic reports. First, occasion-unspecific information is often sufficient for the recovery of modulated content. Second, interpreters can recover what is said with different degrees of accuracy. Homophonic reports and inter-contextual communication (...) are often successful because the reporting context does not demand full accuracy. (shrink)

The opportunities to become a good person are not the same for everyone. Modern European ethical theory, especially Kantian ethics, assumes the same virtues are accessible to all who are capable of rational choice. Character development, however, is affected by circumstances, such as those of wealth and socially constructed categories of gender, race, and sexual orientation, which introduce factors beyond the control of individuals. Implications of these influences for morality have, since the work of Williams and Nagel in the seventies, (...) raised questions in philosophy about the concept of moral luck. In The Unnatural Lottery, Claudia Card examines how luck enters into moral character and considers how some of those who are oppressed can develop responsibility. Luck is often best appreciated by those who have known relatively bad luck and have been unable to escape steady comparison of their lot with those of others. The author takes as her paradigms the luck of middle and lower classes of women who face violence and exploitation, of lesbians who face continuing pressure to hide or self-destruct, of culturally Christian whites who have ethnic privilege, and of adult survivors of child abuse. How have such people been affected by luck in who they are and can become, the good lives available to them, the evils they may be liable to embody? Other philosophers have explored the luck of those who begin from privileged positions and then suffer reversals of fortune. Claudia Card focuses on the more common cases of those who begin from socially disadvantaged positions, and she considers some who find their good luck troubling when its source is the unnatural lottery of social injustice. (shrink)

An increasing number of studies indicate that virtues affect brain structure. These studies might shed new light on some neuroethical perspectives suggesting that our brain network activity determines the acquisition and permanence of virtues. According to these perspectives, virtuous behavior could be interpreted as the product of a brain mechanism supervised by genes and environment and not as the result of free choice. In this respect, the neural correlates of virtues would confirm the deterministic theory. In contrast, I maintain that (...) these findings do not undermine the role of willpower and freedom while reinforcing an interactionist view of free will. If virtues affect our neural system, then the predictability of the virtuous behavior follows. The likelihood of our future actions is primarily virtue-dependent; therefore, the acquired naturality of virtuous behavior is a source of predictable behavioral patterns outlining expected actions, which I propose to call Hypotheses of Action. However, the predictability of an action indicates its likeliness and not its certainty or necessity. The neural traces of virtues can be interpreted as major indicators of HAs. It is always possible for the agents to depart from their more likely, virtue-induced actions, but their deviations from the virtuous behavioral pattern are rare, as it is rare for the vicious/non-virtuous person to behave well systematically. This implies a reaffirmation of the notions of veto and consent as they provide a universal practical power affecting the subject’s use of moral virtues. (shrink)

Statements such as “X is beautiful but I don’t like how it looks” or “I like how X looks but it is not beautiful” sound contradictory. How contradictory they sound might however depend on the object X and on the aesthetic adjective being used (“beautiful”, “elegant”, “dynamic”, etc.). In our study, the first sentence was estimated to be more contradictory than the latter: If we describe something as beautiful, we often intend to evaluate its appearance, whereas it is less counterintuitive (...) to appreciate an appearance without finding it beautiful. Furthermore, statements including “beautiful” appeared more contradictory than those including “elegant” and “dynamic”, pointing to its greater evaluative component. When related to artworks, sentences could appear less contradictory due to readers’ consideration of the divergence between conventional beauty and art-related sensory pleasures that can even include negative valence. Such ambivalence might be more frequent in art-objects than in other artefacts. Indeed, in our study, sentences referring to artworks were estimated to be less contradictory compared to sentences referring to other artefacts. Meanwhile, an additional small group of graphic design students showed a less clear difference between art-related and non-art-related sentences. We discuss the potential influence of art experience and interest as well as theoretical and methodological challenges like the conceptualization of beauty. (shrink)

Why have so many people responded to the insecurity, exploitation, alienation, and isolation of precarity capitalism by supporting the far right? In this timely book, Claudia Leeb argues that psychoanalytic and feminist critical theory illuminates how economic and psychological factors interact to produce this extreme political shift. Contesting the Far Right examines right-wing recruitment tactics in the United States and Austria, where people discontented with the status quo have turned to far-right parties and movements that further cement capitalism’s adverse (...) effects. Leeb contends that Freudian psychoanalytic theory and early Frankfurt School Critical Theory provide analytical tools to explain this apparent contradiction in psychological terms. Living under precarity capitalism generates feelings of failure and anxiety, which people experience as non-wholeness, because it has become difficult if not impossible to live up to the fetish of economic, interpersonal, and bodily success, and the far right preys on such feelings. Its psychologically oriented propaganda tactics produce the illusion of wholeness and a positive sense of self while leaving the socioeconomic conditions that cause people’s suffering intact. At the same time, they remove the inhibitions that keep people’s repressed aggression and racist and sexist attitudes in check. To demonstrate the workings of this process, Leeb compares cases including Trump and the alt-right in the United States and the Freedom Party and the identitarian movement in Austria. At once theoretically rich and politically engaged, this book also offers ways to resist the far right and counter the psychological appeal of its propaganda techniques. (shrink)

This essay reflects on issues raised by commentators regarding my book, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford 2002). They are (1) Robin Schott's observation of the tension between my discussion of forgiveness and of castration fantasies; (2) Bat-Ami Bar On's questions regarding whether evil is ethical, political, or both; (3) Adam Morton's queries regarding the relative seriousness of evils and injustices; and (4) María Pía Lara's concerns regarding what is valuable in Kant's ethics.

In his seminal _Philosophy of David Hume_, Norman Kemp Smith called for a study of Hume "in all his manifold activities: as philosopher, as political theorist, as economist, as historian, and as man of letters," indicating that "Hume's philosophy, as the attitude of mind that found for itself these various forms of expression, will then have been presented, adequately and in due perspective, for the first time." Claudia Schmidt seeks to address this long-standing need in Hume scholarship. Against the (...) charges that Hume holds no consistent philosophical position, offers no constructive account of rationality, and sees no positive relation between philosophy and other areas of inquiry, Schmidt argues for the overall coherence of Hume's thought as a study of "reason in history." She develops this interpretation by tracing Hume's constructive account of human cognition and its historical dimension as a unifying theme across the full range of his writings. Hume, she shows, provides a positive account of the ways in which our concepts, beliefs, emotions, and standards of judgment in different areas of inquiry are shaped by experience, both in the personal history of the individual and in the life of a community. This book is valuable at many levels: for students, as an introduction to Hume's writings and issues in their interpretation; for Hume specialists, as a unified and intriguing interpretation of his thought; for philosophers generally, as a synthesis of recent developments in Hume scholarship; and for scholars in other disciplines, as a guide to Hume's contributions to their own fields. (shrink)

In his seminal _Philosophy of David Hume_, Norman Kemp Smith called for a study of Hume "in all his manifold activities: as philosopher, as political theorist, as economist, as historian, and as man of letters," indicating that "Hume's philosophy, as the attitude of mind that found for itself these various forms of expression, will then have been presented, adequately and in due perspective, for the first time." Claudia Schmidt seeks to address this long-standing need in Hume scholarship. Against the (...) charges that Hume holds no consistent philosophical position, offers no constructive account of rationality, and sees no positive relation between philosophy and other areas of inquiry, Schmidt argues for the overall coherence of Hume's thought as a study of "reason in history." She develops this interpretation by tracing Hume's constructive account of human cognition and its historical dimension as a unifying theme across the full range of his writings. Hume, she shows, provides a positive account of the ways in which our concepts, beliefs, emotions, and standards of judgment in different areas of inquiry are shaped by experience, both in the personal history of the individual and in the life of a community. This book is valuable at many levels: for students, as an introduction to Hume's writings and issues in their interpretation; for Hume specialists, as a unified and intriguing interpretation of his thought; for philosophers generally, as a synthesis of recent developments in Hume scholarship; and for scholars in other disciplines, as a guide to Hume's contributions to their own fields. (shrink)

The relationship between fear and courage has been discussed in terms of opposite though mutually involving notions. However, their link has not been inquired extensively. Recently, new light has been shed on the topic thanks to recent empirical evidence within emotion theories that stress the role played by perception and/or cognition in the experience of fear, as well as the role played by the “emotional virtue” of courage in fear regulation. Questions arise whether fear has a fundamentally perceptual structure or (...) is a biologically-grounded natural kind, and whether such an emotion-related virtue as courage is intrinsically or extrinsically related to fear. This paper considers the last problem first, then enlarges the picture to fear modeling, finally drives some conclusions which aim at deepening the relationship between fear and courage. As a result, it emerges that the emotion of fear has a conceptual, emotional, situational and subjective dimension. Assuming fear as a possible emotional center within the subject’s cognitive experience, the virtue of courage appears to balance the excess and lack of fear, and is consequently related to rational thoughts and consistent behavior, laying the foundations for a new Aristotelian-Thomistic account for it. (shrink)

This essay pursues the question of vegetal respiration in Presocratics’ doctrines in contrast to Aristotle’s categorical circumscription of this vital process to the blooded animals. It finds that epithelial respiration in DK31 B100 is central to Empedocles’ conception of plants’ breathing, linked to their fructification, deciduousness, and overall life preservation. It also discusses plants’ respiration in relation to their body temperature in Menestor, then, concludes by analyzing Democritus’ psychological doctrine, arguing that the intake of fiery atoms pertained to all living (...) beings, plants included. (shrink)

Within bioethics, Kant’s conception of autonomy is often portrayed as excessively rationalistic, abstract, and individualistic, and, therefore, far removed from the reality of patients’ needs. Drawing on recent contributions in Kantian philosophy, we argue that specific features of Kantian autonomy remain relevant for medical ethics and for patient experience. We use contemporary end-of-life illness narratives—a resource that has not been analyzed with respect to autonomy—and show how they illustrate important Kantian themes, namely, the duty to know oneself, the interest in (...) elaborating universalizable principles, and the emphasis on ideals as points of orientation that guide behavior without ever being fully realized. As Kant does, the patient-authors discussed here perceive the end of life as a moment to reflect on the constitutive principles which have governed that life, thereby offering a privileged moment to pursue self-knowledge. We argue that bioethical conceptions of autonomy stand to gain if they revise their conception of Kantian moral philosophy as too formal, abstract, and detached from emotions and personal relationships to be helpfully applied. (shrink)

We present a geometrical analysis of the principles that lay at the basis of Categorial Grammar and of the Lambek Calculus. In Abrusci it is shown that the basic properties known as Residuation laws can be characterized in the framework of Cyclic Multiplicative Linear Logic, a purely non-commutative fragment of Linear Logic. We present a summary of this result and, pursuing this line of investigation, we analyze a well-known set of categorial grammar laws: Monotonicity, Application, Expansion, Type-raising, Composition, Geach laws (...) and Switching laws. (shrink)

In Aristotle's Ethics as First Philosophy Claudia Baracchi demonstrates the indissoluble links between practical and theoretical wisdom in Aristotle's thinking. Referring to a broad range of texts from the Aristotelian corpus, Baracchi shows how the theoretical is always informed by a set of practices, and specifically, how one's encounter with phenomena, the world, or nature in the broadest sense, is always a matter of ethos. Such a 'modern' intimation can, thus, be found at the heart of Greek thought. Baracchi's (...) book opens the way for a comprehensively reconfigured approach to classical Greek philosophy. (shrink)

What distinguishes evils from ordinary wrongs? Are some evils unforgivable? How should we respond to evils? Card offers a secular theory of evil--representing a compromise between classic utilitarian and stoic approaches--that responds to these and other questions.

Given the negative consequences of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on public health, his study aimed at investigating: the differences between adults with and without chronic illness in buying behavior, vaccination intention, pandemic worry, and the health belief model components; the HBM components as mediators of the relationship between pandemic worry and vaccination intention. The sample consisted of 864 adults, of which 20.5% reported having a chronic illness. Associations between pandemic worry, vaccination intention, and HBM were ascertained using correlation and mediation (...) analyses. Individuals with chronic illness reported a higher level of pandemic worry, higher levels of perceived threat, greater benefits from vaccination, had lower self-efficacy and bought more medicine and sanitary/hygienic products. No significant differences were observed regarding vaccination intention, barriers against vaccination, and changes in food buying behavior. We found that the relationship between pandemic worry and vaccination intention was partially mediated by the perceived threat of disease and the benefits of vaccination. Pandemic worry predicted vaccination intention directly but also through the contribution of the perceived threat of disease and the benefits of vaccination. These findings suggest that presenting evidence of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and the benefits of having the vaccine will encourage the population to follow vaccination recommendations. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement that an adequate understanding of the nature of science (NOS) is a critical component of scientific literacy and a major goal in science education. However, we still do not know many specific details regarding how students and teachers learn particular aspects of NOS and what are the most important feature traits of instruction. In this context, the main objective of this review is to analyze articles from nine main science education journals that consider the teaching of (...) NOS to K-12 students, pre-service, and in-service science teachers in search of patterns in teaching and learning NOS. After reviewing 52 studies in nine journals that included data regarding participants’ views of NOS before and after an intervention, the main findings were as follows: (1) some aspects of NOS (empirical basis, observation and inference, and creativity) are easier to learn than others (tentativeness, theory and law, and social and cultural embeddedness), and subjective aspects of NOS and “the scientific method” seemed to be difficult for participants to understand; (2) the interventions most frequently lasted 5 to 8 weeks for students, one semester for pre-service teachers, and 1 year for experienced teachers; and (3) most of the interventions incorporated both decontextualized and contextualized activities. Given the substantial diversity in the methods and intervention designs used and the variables studied, it was not possible to infer a pattern of more-effective NOS teaching strategies from the reviewed studies. Future investigation should focus on (a) disentangling whether a difference exists between the easy and difficult aspects of learning NOS and formulating a theoretical explanation for distinguishing the two types of aspects and (b) assessing the effectiveness of different kinds of courses (e.g., history of science, NOS or informal) and strategies (e.g., hands-on vs. drama activities; SSI vs. HOS). (shrink)